EFR 824: Everything You Need to Know About MICRODOSING - How Psilocybin Can Improve Your Mood, Boost Your Energy, and Get Better Sleep and Other Benefits and Risks with Paul Austin

00:00 - Speaker 2 The following is an Operation Podcast production, you know something like 4 million people microdosed last year in the United States alone 4 million in 2023. In 2023 alone, Nearly double that number of people. About 8 million people took psilocybin mushrooms. What people often experience when they start to actively microdose better mood, better energy, better sleep and generally there's this feeling of I'm more present, I'm less distracted, I'm more connected, I feel less isolated. Caveat though, is that everyone has different sensitivities, right? So your microdose might be 100 milligrams. For someone else it could be 250.

00:38 - Speaker 1 Is there a standard of microdosing protocols in terms of days on and days off, I think basically everyone can benefit from microdosing psilocybin mushrooms, just like I believe everyone could benefit if they took creatine.

00:51 - Speaker 2 Everyone could benefit if they took fish oil. Everyone could benefit if they take vitamin D, so I look at it as a physiological supplement at these low doses that helps to lower chronic inflammation, that helps to improve neuroplasticity, that helps to increase energy and improve mood and that helps you to get better sleep. Like what?

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03:26 Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. I'm so glad you're here with me today. My name is Chase Schooning. I am your host. I am a certified health coach, wellness entrepreneur, army veteran and, dare I even say, psychonaut. And if you don't know what that word means.

03:43 Well, today we're going to give you a little glimpse into the world of psychedelics, specifically microdosing. Let me ask you a question what if there was a way that you could potentially enhance your mood, your energy and your sleep with one tiny dose? One tiny dose of one of the most, in my opinion, all natural things we have ever had on this planet? Join me today, with special guest Paul Austin, as we dive into the world of microdosing, specifically psilocybin. We talk a little bit about LSD, but mostly this is all your masterclass in terms of protocol, dosage, frequency, other compounding effects and so much more into the world of microdosing with psilocybin. Paul is an entrepreneur, author and coach who sees psychedelic use as a skill cultivated through clear intention, supportive mentorship and what he calls courageous exploration. If you'd like to learn more about what Paul has to offer in the world of psychedelic education microdosing he's got some great resources and ecosystems out there. If you will, I'm gonna have all of his information linked for you down in the show notes as well as the link to this video. You can find us on YouTube or always up on everfordradiocom, and I also referenced a few other past podcasts where I share some solo experiences.

05:02 I talked about my experience with ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, my six gram heroic dose of psilocybin and other special episodes where I interview medical professionals, wellness and psychedelic leaders and all things psychedelics through the lens of how can we use this in a very safe and informed and intentional environment a very safe environment and dive into the deep end so that we can then come out and have a much more clearer understanding of who we are, who we want to be and, more specifically, through the lens of EverForward, how to move forward, how to keep moving forward in the right direction.

05:39 Please, this episode is meant to just educate you and to bring some really unique insights and personal experiences from myself and Paul to the table. As always, do your homework, do your research, do your due diligence, make sure you are aware of legalities, illegalities, decriminalization in your city, in your state, in your country, so on and so forth. And with that, please join me in welcoming Paul Austin to Ever Forward Radio. For somebody tuning in right now, why should they stick around? What do you think they're going to walk away with?

06:11 - Speaker 2 Well, the topic that we're going to get into, microdosing, is a pretty new modality. There's not a lot of understanding about it, and I think when people hear about microdosing or they hear about psychedelics, the initial impulse is, oh, illegal drug or oh, this is only for people who have depression or PTSD. And so I think the reason to stick around is to really explore what is the full territory of microdosing psychedelics when it comes to performance, leadership and also for healing. And why is this a modality that so many people are starting to utilize and approach? Because you know, recent research is you?

06:48 know, something like four million people microdosed last year in the United States alone four million in 2023 in 2023 alone in the United States microdosed nearly double that number of people. About eight million people took psilocybin mushrooms in the United States in 2023. So it's not huge like a Prozac or Zoloft or even like cannabis, but it's clearly becoming more popular, and the reason for that is because it works. And it works for a lot of different reasons, which we'll talk about today.

07:15 - Speaker 1 Kind of preface the episode. Definitely do your due diligence. I'm not here, paul's not here to condone any particular illegal activity. I take this information as education, as you will Do your homework. Let's define our terms Microdosing. When we say microdosing, what does that mean? What is that?

07:36 - Speaker 2 So microdosing first became a thing in 2011.

07:38 So just over a decade ago, there was a guy named Dr James Fadiman, who is a researcher from the 1960s, when the second wave of psychedelics was around, who wrote a book called the Psychedelic Explorer's Guide, and in that book he had a full chapter dedicated to what he called microdosing, which was, as he defined it, taking a very low dose of a psychedelic usually LSD or psilocybin mushrooms and taking that very low dose two or three times per week for a period of a month to two months to three months, right.

08:10 And so the idea behind microdosing is, unlike a therapeutic dose of psychedelic, which is a very high dose that's done one time in a appropriate set and setting, with maybe a therapist or a guide or a facilitator, microdosing is doing it consistently over the span of, let's say, a month, two or three times a week, and really looking at the trajectory of change from day one to day 30.

08:38 So, not being as preoccupied with I took a microdose on this day, how am I feeling? But instead of having the patients say I'm going to stick to this protocol for at least a month, with an understanding that after a month I'm going to start to notice some tangible benefits and what people often experience when they start to actively microdose which we'll go deeper into but just as a starter, they tend to feel more present, they tend to feel more energized, there's more mood, there's more energy, they have a better mood and they get better sleep. So the three things that I point to are better mood, better energy, better sleep and generally there's this feeling of I'm more present, I'm less distracted, I'm more connected, I feel less isolated, which also lends itself to a lot of, I would say, relational benefits.

09:27 - Speaker 1 What's your history with it? Do you have an authority in the space expertise scope of practice? Why should we listen to what you have to say about microdosing? That's a good question.

09:37 - Speaker 2 So in 2010, so about 15 years ago, 14 years ago I started to work with psychedelics myself at the age of 19. So high doses of LSD Work with meaning and psilocybin mushrooms.

09:49 Yeah, I started to take them myself, started to explore them and understand them, mostly in an outdoor setting with a friend or two so not a therapeutic, but also not a rave or a music festival still quiet, contained intentional environment. And those early experiences were very influential in terms of the path that I chose to take. And at the age of 24, I was living in Budapest and I just noticed and observed that more people were starting to talk about microdosing. This was in 2015. More people were talking about psychedelics, more people were talking about microdosing, and I noticed that there wasn't a lot of information and context out there. So about 10 years ago, 2015, I started to publish educational content around the topic of psychedelics and the topic of microdosing and built my own, you know, hired a PhD in neuroscience to write all the initial sort of articles and it kind of built an early team.

10:42 And James Fadiman, who is this author of the Psychedelic Explorers Guide, basically took me under his wing in 2017. I was his main mentee, I suppose, and introduced me to a lot of journalists, and so from 2017 onwards, I ended up doing a lot of public speaking. I had features in Rolling Stone and Forbes, in the BBC's work life. And then I, you know, I'm not a. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a therapist, I don't have a master's degree. I I've lived abroad and been nomadic for the last 12 years. Do?

11:15 - Speaker 1 you have any kind of background in health, wellness, anything that might you know, kind of lack of better term, carry over and like an understanding of the human body, the human experience I was, a college athlete.

11:25 - Speaker 2 Okay, right. So I studied history and business at university at the age of 19. As a college athlete, I became very interested in performance. I started to do CrossFit, I started to eat paleo, I started to move a lot more. In terms of functional fitness, I started wearing the Vibram five fingers. You know this was 15 years ago, so I was very early on in terms of like the paleo ancestral movement. Like my first blog that I read was Mark's Daily Apple back in like 2009, 2010. And so I really started to follow that primal ancestral path of which psychedelics were a part, because and this is even in our platform name Third Wave.

12:07 It suggests there's a first wave and a second wave, and so often what I teach is the first wave of psychedelics was the ancient and indigenous use of psychedelics. So, just like from my perspective, it's optimal to eat the diet that we've been eating for tens of thousands of years as a human species, it's also optimal to sleep in that way, to move in that way, to have relationships in that way. There's some wisdom in the evolutionary biology. I think that equally applies to working with psychedelics, because humans have been working with these substances for thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years and it's no coincidence that they're coming back into sort of the mainstream consciousness at a point in time when they're really needed for a lot of reasons. So my authority purely rests in the fact that I'm curious.

12:53 I've found great mentors along the path and then I've started three very successful, I would say, companies in the space. So Third Wave is an educational media site. I also started a legal psilocybin retreat center in the Netherlands in 2018 called Synthesis. We did high-dose psilocybin retreats for over 1,000 people and then a lot of the blueprint that we built in the Netherlands we brought over to Oregon, where psilocybin is legal, and helped to implement it within a state legal model.

13:21 - Speaker 1 Everything is legal in Oregon, is it not?

13:23 - Speaker 2 Psilocybin is only legal Only legal. They had a law that had decriminalized all drugs, but that was recently revoked. It was, unfortunately, interesting. Yeah, and then now my most recent project is I run a training program for coaches, practitioners, who want to learn what I call the skill of psychedelics. So Mastering Microdosing is a book that I've written on microdosing. If folks go on my website, paulaustinco, there's a lot more there, but I've just I was an early adopter of this, I was ahead of the curve on it, and I'm just someone who's really dedicated and devoted to this and I love to learn and teach, and so that everything is just sort of come from that perspective and that lens.

14:04 - Speaker 1 Thank you for showing that, thank you for kind of painting that picture for us. So today we're going to be predominantly talking about microdosing with psilocybin. Psilocybin is the quote magic mushroom strain and then I believe, given time, we'll also kind of get into maybe microdosing LSD. So why psilocybin? What is so unique or beneficial about this strain of mushrooms that has the general public and even clinical studies now interested in using it this way through microdosing?

14:35 - Speaker 2 So psilocybin is the active loid in psilocybin mushrooms, right? So the whole, the whole fungi, we could call it psilocybin mushrooms. There's over 200 species of psychoactive mushrooms that exist in the world. We probably use only three to four to five, so we don't use a lot of them, but over 200 species exist. As I mentioned before, we have a long history of use with these substances. Terence McKenna, who wrote a book called Food of the Gods, talked about it that he believes our ancient ancestors when they were Food of the Gods. Talked about it that he believes our ancient ancestors, when they were going across the savannas of Africa, would take small doses of mushrooms because it helps with visual acuity. So there's this author. His name is Terence McKenna. He wrote a book called Food of the Gods which presented a speculative, I would say, hypothesis that our ancient ancestors used low doses of psilocybin mushrooms to hunt. Right, because it helps with visual acuity. It helps you to see better, and those who could see better out in the savanna were more likely to kill food, more likely to survive.

15:34 So, there was some evolutionary benefit to taking these low doses of psilocybin mushrooms. Mckenna also believed that the high doses of psilocybin mushrooms that our ancient ancestors used and again this is very speculative, but that it was responsible for the expansion of consciousness, literally, if you look at the cranial size of our ancestors, there was a point, I believe 30 or 40 or 50,000 years ago, where it started to expand substantially, to expand substantially. And so McKenna believes that psilocybin mushrooms and the use of psilocybin mushrooms potentially helped the brain and the cranial area to physically expand, which is why we ended up becoming the sort of dominant species in the food chain, because we became much more intelligent and resourceful about how we could use all these resources. So I communicate all of that to say there's a rich history and context.

16:25 Now, when we look at the current medical use of psilocybin, there's been a lot of clinical research published over the last 20 years showing how effective it is at treating major depressive disorder and treatment-resistant depression. There's a lot of vets specifically who talk about how psilocybin is very helpful in healing their PTSD and the reason for that. There's two main, I would say, neurobiological mechanisms of action to pay attention to when working with psilocybin, right. The first one is its impact on neuroplasticity.

16:56 So clinical research has shown that when we take psilocybin mushrooms, the production of BDNF, which you're probably familiar with which is a precursor to neuroplasticity, is activated, it increases the use of psychedelics, activates more BDNF, which naturally then helps the brain to become more plastic. So when we look at why is psilocybin or why are generally psychedelics so beneficial. The first reason that I often point to is neuroplasticity, because the capacity to change is at the heart of all transformation. Right, if there's a relationship that's not healthy, if there's a practice that's slowly killing you, if there's a habit that you just want to let go of, psilocybin mushrooms, because of their impact on neuroplasticity, can help you to shift out of that and integrate new behavioral patterns.

17:43 The second thing is its impact on the amygdala. So the amygdala is a little tiny, almond-shaped size part of our brain. It's called the reptilian brain. It's the oldest part of our brain. It's our fear center.

17:55 So when we get afraid or activated, that fear center starts to go off, which can often prevent us from really fully becoming who we know we want to become because of the fear of what might happen, the fear of rejection, the fear of loss, the fear of embarrassment, the fear of shame, whatever that is. So what happens when we take a psychedelic is that fear response gets downregulated. So all of a sudden, people. When they come out of these psychedelic experiences, or when they're microdosing, they start to notice oh I'm willing to have that difficult conversation that before I was afraid to have, or I'm willing to step out of my comfort zone and commit to this practice, even though before it just felt too intimidating to start. So there's a way in which psilocybin can help to sort of grease the wheels of our brain. So it becomes more malleable and we become more focused on not living in fear but living in creative potential, which I think is hugely beneficial.

18:51 - Speaker 1 Hey guys, quick break from my conversation with Paul. I have to remind you about today's sponsor, chili Pad, by Sleep Me. I have been using Chili Pad. I first started using this product probably about three years ago, kind of the beginning of lockdowns, and when I tell you this is one of the things that move the needle most for me and most quickly in terms of my sleep, it is an understatement, and you've been listening to the show for any length of time.

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21:00 If you'd like to learn more. Head to sleepme slash ever forward. That's S L E, e, p. Dot me slash ever forward. Exclusive to you, my Everford radio listener. Discount code Everford should automatically apply at checkout. But if not, just throw down code Everford. But it's a limited time deal. If you want the at-home 30 day trial, you gotta act now. Fear, then, would you say, is not always our ability to choose to act in spite of fear or act because of it. Quite literally could be a biological kind of mechanism keeping us stuck. But if we can learn how to expand it, push its boundaries, that limiting factor is not really I'm hearing as much an issue.

21:47 - Speaker 2 Well, and there's a balance here, right? Because probably folks who are listening to this, they maybe heard some of the horror stories from the 60s where people would take a fuck ton of LSD and jump out of windows. Yeah, yeah, right. So your fear response is there for good reason because, again, coming back to evolutionary biology, if you were being chased by a saber-toothed tiger, that fight or flight response is essential. You want to have some fear.

22:12 - Speaker 1 You need to have some fear. You don't want to be like come on, Mr Sabertooth. Exactly, Not necessarily.

22:17 - Speaker 2 But in the modern world, you know, because of the urban environments that the majority of us live in, we are constantly in a sympathetic state, a state of fight or flight, right. Our autonomic nervous system is not relaxed, and so when people start to microdose, they start to do psychedelics. It can help that awareness to come online and then help us to choose practices and behaviors that allow us to spend more time in a parasympathetic state. We get less activated, we get less triggered and we make better decisions for ourselves. And so the fear thing is it's over-activated because of our dysregulated nervous systems. And it's healthy to some degree, which is why, if doing higher doses of psychedelics, it's so important to have a guide or a therapist or a friend that's there with you. Microdosing is different because it is so low dose. It's what I call sub intoxicating, right, so you're not experiencing an altered state of consciousness or tripping, you can just sort of navigate your everyday life, and that allows you to still have some of these benefits without becoming so overwhelmed by the overall experience.

23:31 - Speaker 1 I think a lot of people when they look to microdosing. The next question is how much? What's the dosage?

23:38 - Speaker 2 Yeah, so the most common strain with psilocybin mushrooms is a strain called golden teachers, which you've probably heard of, and the reason I mentioned strain is because different strains of mushrooms have different potencies, right, but for golden teachers it's the pretty centered balance strain.

23:55 100 milligrams of psilocybin teachers is the typical microdose, so it's about 0.1 grams. 0.1 grams A therapeutic dose of psilocybin is anywhere from 2 to 4, up to 5 grams of psilocybin mushrooms, so it's usually about a tenth to a twentieth of a high dose is what a microdose is. The caveat, though, is that everyone has different sensitivities, right, so your microdose might be 100 milligrams, for me it might be 150, for someone else it could be 250. I've even had folks where a microdose for them is 500 milligrams, a half gram, and the main variable in that the first one is age. So if someone is in their 60s or 70s, they never have you know, they don't have any prior psychedelic experience. They've had the same ruts in their brain and patterns of behavior happening for 60 years. It's going to take a little bit more to pop them out of that.

24:52 - Speaker 1 Right, so you're saying the older we are, most likely we need a higher dose, even in a micro dose setting, most likely.

25:00 - Speaker 2 The other main variable is if there is a history of significant trauma we could say like acute PTSD trauma, we could say like acute ptsd, there may need to be more because there could be certain systems that are shut down, that need a bit more activation to be brought online, but, and most commonly, those who are unnecessarized prozac, zoloft, lexapro they have a very blunted response to microdoses. So what I always tell folks is start low and go slow.

25:27 - Speaker 1 Uh, you can always take more.

25:28 - Speaker 2 You can't take less right and what hunter s Hunter S Thompson once said is like once you buy the ticket, you take the ride, and obviously he was talking about very high doses of LSE and mushrooms and whatnot. But I think it's really important to go. Okay, I'm in this. So let's say someone's listening to this. All right, how do I start this? How do I approach this?

25:49 What I usually say is start at 50 milligrams of psilocybin, go to a hundred milligrams and on the next day you do it one, 50, 200, two, 50, and get to a dose level we were like I definitely feel this, I notice it. It's maybe even impacting slightly, impacting your capacity to navigate your day to day. And you know, okay, that's my top, okay, I'm not going to go any higher than this and usually take a step back and that's your true microdose. So if you're like at 200 milligrams of psilocybin, if you're like a little woozy and much more emotional than normal and like you can't focus as well, probably go from 200 down to 150. Okay, and that calibration is so critical, and what I tell folks usually is spend at least two weeks on calibrating your dose appropriate.

26:32 - Speaker 1 So same dose for about two weeks, before you alter anything.

26:35 - Speaker 2 No. So experiment with doses the first two weeks and that way you can get a sense of this impacts me this way, this impacts me. That way you can get a sense of okay, this is how I'm responding to it, and then find your sweet spot and commit to that for at least four weeks. Okay, right, and that's a good six week protocol where you're like two weeks of experimentation, calibration, trying to figure out my dose, trying to figure out my sweet spot. Okay, I got it. Now let's commit to that for four straight weeks, take the same dosage two or three times a week and then just notice and observe what's happening, what's going on for you as you're getting into it.

27:07 - Speaker 1 Now would you give that same advice to a woman versus a man, to a woman at one weight versus another, a man at one weight versus another? Does sex, weight, body composition play a role at all in figuring out what that microdose dose is?

27:25 - Speaker 2 I mean there are some like general out generalizations that may be useful. Like, women tend to be more sensitive to these things because they're more in touch with their emotional body. Men tend to be a bit more in their head, a bit more. They have a bit more armoring. If you have someone who's a hundred pounds and you have someone who's 300 pounds, for sure the 300 pound person is probably going to have to take a little bit more. But you'd be surprised people who are 140 pounds. There'll be some folks who need way more than people who are 220 pounds, cause a lot of it comes down to how emotionally sensitive and open you are.

27:58 Okay, and most a lot of men you know are not that emotionally open. They have a lot of armory and especially if they're new at this, so men tend to need a little bit more than women, especially if they're new at this. So men tend to need a little bit more than women. Again, the weight thing not a huge deal. If someone is quite obese and quite heavy, they're probably going to need a little bit more. But if you're anywhere from 100 pounds to 220 pounds, that 100 milligram to 150 milligram is a good kind of place to start with.

28:26 - Speaker 1 Overall, and then, what about in a fasted or non-fasted state? Should we be maybe, at least in the beginning, trying microdosing on an empty stomach? Do we need to have food in our system? Is it going to mess up our appetite?

28:39 - Speaker 2 Yeah, that's a great question. So part of this depends on how much nausea a microdose might give. Some people have very sensitive stomachs and very sensitive GI tracts and so if that is the case it's helpful to have food before you take a microdose. It's going to extend the absorption time, but that's better than feeling quite sick to your stomach first thing in the morning. If someone isn't as sensitive and most people can handle 100 milligrams fine first thing in the morning, I mean I drink water first and maybe I have a little tea, but first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, microdosing. And then, if someone's like an intermittent faster, then when meal time comes around around 12 or 1, just eat a normal meal and see how you feel. But I do prefer to do that first thing on an empty stomach in the morning. If someone is quite sensitive, maybe have a little bit of food beforehand.

29:29 - Speaker 1 And then, what about with caffeine or without?

29:35 - Speaker 2 This is a good question. So with psilocybin mushrooms the caffeine intake is less relevant because psilocybin isn't as stimulating as LSD. Lsd is much more stimulating, it's much more activating.

29:46 - Speaker 1 So if someone was interested in microdosing with lsd and they drink a lot of caffeine, I would say bring it down a lot of caffeine, meaning two or more cups of coffee a day, probably something like above 300 milligrams, 300 to 400 if you're above 300 milligrams, maybe cut that in half to 150 on the microdosing day.

30:05 - Speaker 2 With lsd psilocybin it's less important, although I will say those who are on a lot of caffeine every day are going to have lower sensitivity to psilocybin. So part of the journey as well could be how could you bring down, especially if someone is relying on caffeine for energy, how can you bring that caffeine level down? And microdose is a way to sort of balance it, because the psilocybin will help to activate more energy but it's not addictive at all.

30:33 - Speaker 1 So it's not a stimulant and it's not a stimulant and you can't.

30:36 - Speaker 2 If you're doing it every other day, you're not going to build tolerance up for it as well. So it's a really great substance to, yeah, experiment with and see, like can you bring cannabis down? Can you bring caffeine down? Can you bring you know like, can you bring cannabis down? Can you bring caffeine down? Can you bring you know, alcohol?

30:52 - Speaker 1 A lot of people start to microdose to get off of alcohol. I want to get into that in a little bit kind of the other surprising benefits of what happens While we're still in this kind of dosage and protocol area of microdosing. You said maybe in the morning I'm going to have it with water or a little tea. Is the morning the best time to microdose? Or whatever time we pick? Should we stick with that if we're on a particular protocol, if we want to try it out for any length of time? Good question.

31:16 - Speaker 2 So psilocybin is a different compound than LSD and I'm going to keep talking about this because these are the two most common. So LSD lasts for up to 12 hours. It's much longer curve. And so if folks are microdosing with LSD, do it first thing in the morning, because the risk is if you do it too late it'll cause issues with sleep. Right, Psilocybin is a bit more flexible because it only lasts for five to six hours. It's not as long.

31:46 So you could take psilocybin first thing in the morning. You could also take it in the afternoon, you know, at 1 pm, 2 pm, 3 pm, 3 pm is probably the latest that I would take it. But there is some flexibility when it comes to the timing of it. If you're working with psilocybin, again, I just do it first thing in the morning because typically I love to do my creative work and focused work the first six, seven hours of the day and then I'm done. But everyone has a different flow and so if it works better for your schedule to do it in the afternoon, you could totally microdose the psilocybin in the afternoon.

32:20 - Speaker 1 Whatever your morning is, maybe you know you're a shift worker, you're a night owl, so whatever your kind of beginning, front end of the day, your day is.

32:27 - Speaker 2 Potentially. And the other thing which we were slowly getting into is some people like to take these low doses for social purposes, right, so instead of drinking alcohol, they'll take a low dose of mushrooms or, you know, a low dose of something called San Pedro, but they'll play with these other substances rather than drinking alcohol. So if that's the case, then you might microdose or take a low dose at 7 pm, 8 pm, if you know you're going to be at a party and you want to be more outgoing. But that's a much more advanced technique. I would say for everyone who's newbies, the best way to start is get a six-week protocol. Take the same dosage every other day for those last four weeks. Do it at the same time more or less as much as possible.

33:13 Minimize the variables on that first protocol, because you want to get a sense of okay, if I tweak this or I tweak that, that's later on, let's see how it changes. Right now you want to minimize the chaos, you want to minimize the potential variables that are happening. So, same time every day. Ideally it's like a Monday, wednesday, friday schedule Monday, wednesday, friday. Monday, wednesday, Friday. Or it could be a Tuesday, thursday, saturday, if some folks prefer on the weekend, same time in the mornings, same amount that you do, maybe even have the same morning practice, and that will help to get a sense of how is this impacting me. Is this helpful? Is this not helpful? Whatever that is.

33:50 - Speaker 1 Okay, let's get into kind of the timeline of the microdosing protocol. You were saying maybe Monday, wednesday, friday.

34:01 In my personal experience I found value in doing two days on, one day off. People can find also a you know the Stamet stack, paul Stamet you know he kind of has his own protocol and it's X amount of days on, x amount of days off and then it kind of rotates a little bit. I'm sure if someone Googles microdosing protocol you're going to find a lot of different durations of when you're taking it, when you're not. Is there a standard of microdosing protocols in terms of days on and days off, or is there just one that you recommend most people start with and then kind of play around with it from there, that you recommend most people start with and then kind of play around with it from there?

34:28 - Speaker 2 So my preferred starting point for microdosing protocols is every other day, one day on, one day off. Psilocybin and LSD both have a 48-hour window of tolerance, meaning if you take the same amount on day two as day one, it won't really impact you in the same way. So I advise I'll talk about all the context, though, because there's a lot more I tell folks do it every other day because I find that a lot of people who are new to this work they want to feel it a little bit Again, sub-intoxicating, not in an altered state, not tripping but there's something validating about. Oh, I noticed this, I'm observing this, and so I think that's a helpful anchor to have for those who are brand new. So, every other day, one day on, one day off, three times a week, maybe four times, but I usually say don't do it more than three times a week, and that's the protocol that we teach most through Third Wave. There's two other protocols. One is the protocol by Dr James Fadiman, who I already mentioned, who came up with a one-day-on, two-day-off protocol, and that was specifically because he was largely working with LSD. Lsd is more stimulating than psilocybin and so if someone is microdosing with LSD, typically what I advise is no more than twice a week. One day on two days off. One day on two days off. One day on two days off, reset next week, right Twice a week for five weeks is what Jim says, and that way you microdose 10 times and then you can see how it goes. So microdosing with LSD, that's the Fadiman protocol One day on two days off and then do it again. The final protocol which you mentioned is the Stamets protocol, and Paul Stamets is probably the most famous mycologist in the world.

36:13 He was in the documentary Fantastic Fungi. He has a book called Mycelium Running and came up with something called the Stamets stack, which he has now patented, which is a combination of psilocybin, niacinin and lion's mane. And the protocol that stamens recommends is four days on, three days off. So do it four straight days, take a break and then take three days, so week by week. Yes, yeah, yeah. And his belief, his perspective, is he believes neurogenesis is the most important driving factor in what microdosing is doing and that doing it four days in a row, it almost has a cumulative effect on neuroplasticity. So it's helping to supercharge the brain and its overall functions. And then to help reset tolerance, you do three days off. Okay, I haven't played around with that much. I don't fully understand it myself. The other thing with the Stamets stack is for anyone who has taken niacin before something happens. That's called the niacin flush, which is very uncomfortable the sort of parallel.

37:24 It's like going in a cold plunge you know, the first time pre-workout too much beta alanine kind of feeling ish yeah, you just you're red, your skin turns red, you feel hot, you feel itchy and it you feel activated once it passes. But it might be there for 10 or 15 minutes and if you're not expecting it or not used to it, you're gonna be like what was that?

37:45 - Speaker 1 like I do not want that again. And then you blame the psilocybin. You have a negative association.

37:50 - Speaker 2 Right, which is really? It's niacin, and so, honestly, you know I'm huge into cold plunges. It's similar to a cold plunge. It's uncomfortable for a little bit. But what Paul Stamets argues is the niacin acts as a vasodilator, so it's really opening up the central nervous system and that vasodilation allows for greater absorption of the psilocybin and lion's mane, both of which are highly supportive of BDNF, right neuroplasticity. So if someone really wants to commit to that and this is great for people who have traumatic brain injury, this is great for people who have a history of concussions, this is great for people specifically who are looking to help rebuild neuronal pathways in the brain if they've had challenges with brain functioning. Do the Stamets stack the way he outlined and that can be really helpful for overall brain health and healing. Okay, but most folks don't have that. So for most folks, I'm just like every other day with LSD twice a week. Don't worry about the niacin and lion's mane and all that.

38:48 If you can just get mushrooms, do mushrooms because, that's the other main benefit to psilocybin is it's it's very legal and accessible. You know, even through third way we sell a grow kit, so you can literally purchase a kit from us. You have to get the spores elsewhere and within six weeks you can grow your own mushrooms.

39:03 You just put it in a in a drawer so I think that's the other thing about mushrooms and why they're the most commonly microdosed substance. About 80 of people who microdose microdose with psilocybin. Uh, because they're everywhere. They're super easy. They're now legal in oregon and colorado. They're decriminalized in many other places. So I always say mushrooms are like the medicine of the people and um, they're very easy to to source at this.

39:28 - Speaker 1 I want to get into sourcing and potential barriers to access there. But while we're on the subject of protocols with psilocybin, with other things, you mentioned niacin. You mentioned lion's mane, which, for anybody who doesn't know, lion's mane is a functional mushroom. It's a non-psychoactive mushroom. It has incredible brain health benefits. It's a non-psychoactive mushroom. It has incredible brain health benefits. It's completely legal If you're in the health and wellness space and consuming any kind of you know coffee or CPG. Good these days, odds are it's got a little bit of ions made in it, maybe even cordyceps or reishi or chaga or turkey tail. So my question is what are other elements functional mushrooms, adaptogens, essential vitamins, minerals, electrolytes, other compounds that someone might find in a microdosing protocol or microdose product or can maybe compound to make their own, and what are the benefits?

40:25 - Speaker 2 Yeah. So a good way to look at this is do you want more focus? And what are the benefits? Yeah, so a good way to look at this is do you want more focus, kind of like a go-getter mentality, energy, or do you want something that helps you to be more present, to be more slow, to be more mindful? I see those as being the more go-getter, focused, energized. That's a more yang or yang energy in sort of Taoist lens, and the yang is the masculine, the yin is the much more feminine, soft, present, moment, somatic, emotional, body, right, depending on the intention that'll determine the formulation. So, depending on the intentionality, if someone is more interested in the cognitive benefits, if they're more interested in becoming more productive, in accessing flow and just being more energized. Oftentimes it's these young herbs, which are lion's mane, cordyceps, bacopa longjack, also called tonka, which is a a really good one. It could be creatine that you, that you work with, creatine's even creeping its way into the microdosing world.

41:34 - Speaker 1 Huh, it could like I think it's having a year. I love it.

41:37 - Speaker 2 I take creatine out like, because you need about four and a half grams per day for it to be useful. So I just take it. I say five supplement, yeah, yeah, yeah, I just take it as a supplement, but to have that in combination with it would be difficult to put it in the capsule itself, but you could have it. Yeah, yeah, true, right. So lion's mane, cordyceps, bacopa, long jack, even things like ashwagandha, rhodiola as well these are fantastic adaptogens to include. Chaga is another one that's fantastic as well to include, can you?

42:09 - Speaker 1 uh, for again someone who just is unclearogen. What is that and what is the benefit of that? What does it do?

42:14 - Speaker 2 An adaptogenic herb is an herb that you take. Rhodiola and ashwagandha are the two kind of best known ones, but a lot of these functional mushrooms are also adaptogenic, where if you're feeling stressed, it'll help you feel less stressed. If you're feeling unmotivated, it'll help you feel less stressed. If you're feeling unmotivated, it'll help you feel more motivated. So it sort of just brings you back to a point of balance, homeostasis to a point of homeostasis, and so oftentimes rhodiola ashwagandha if you're feeling low energy to have that as part of a microdose.

42:44 - Speaker 1 It'll help you to be more activated and sort of come online a bit more and for guys, ashwagandha's have having a lot of clinical evidence showing supporting with an active lifestyle and some other contributing factors can support a testosterone boost.

42:57 - Speaker 2 Oh, fantastic All right, that's also good to know. So, and then you know you might have vitamin D3 in there. One of the supplements that I know puts in Shilajit, which is an interesting I've used that one. So that's, the young, the more yin. Would be like, uh, reishi theobromine, which is the main ingredient in cacao. Right, it's more of a heart opener, damiana. Damiana is an aphrodisiac, so it's a. It's a more, uh, more of a heart opener. There's a psychoactive substance called kana um, which is from south af.

43:28 - Speaker 1 A friend of mine just shared this with me this weekend. He's like have you ever heard of this? It's fantastic, that's a great heart opener.

43:34 - Speaker 2 So, with this yin energy, if you're looking for more emotional kind of opening, if you're doing it with the support of a therapist, if you're doing it to process more emotions and find more presence, then these yin herbs are often better. But just to not overcomplicate it psilocybin in and of itself, if you just only took psilocybin, it'll help with mood, it'll help with energy, it'll help with sleep. This is a much more. These formulations, I would say, are more advanced level things where, once you get a sense of the substance itself, how might combining that substance with these other herbs adaptogens, functional mushrooms, what synergistic impact could that have?

44:14 And there's because the next question obviously is on sourcing. We have a sourcing guide on Third Wave that walks people through how to access, like these different microdoses. The sort of fact of it is there's dozens of companies now that are openly selling microdosing products. The risk is that a lot of these companies, you don't know where they're getting their substances from, you don't know the quality of it, you don't know if they're actually putting in mushrooms like they say they're putting in mushrooms.

44:49 - Speaker 1 It doesn't matter if it's the stem. Is it a cap, mycelium, a lot of other contributing factors? What do we need to be aware of that we're looking for, or maybe what questions should we be asking to get purity and potency?

45:02 - Speaker 2 So this is a good question, because what's happening right now is there's been a spate of media over the last few weeks about a mushroom chocolate bar called diamond shrooms which has been now recalled by the fda and it is a psilocybin mushroom chocolate bar, turns out. They did like 50 people have had seizures.

45:23 - Speaker 1 A psilocybin chocolate mushroom bar was recalled by the fda, yes, meaning it was legal and it was out there?

45:30 - Speaker 2 No, it was out there, but not legal. So this is where we get into really weird territory, because there's now mushroom chocolate bars and micro doses of mushrooms all over and being sold all over, because the DEA and other state agencies don't care at this point. They're so focused on fentanyl At this point, they're so focused on fentanyl. And yet, because this is causing so many issues, the FDA had to publish a basically notice that said 50 people have had seizures with this. One person has died. Turns out that they were putting something called muscimol in it, which is from Amanita muscaria. Amanita muscaria is the Santa mushroom, it's the red one with the white dots.

46:10 And that's not like psilocybin at all. And if you put muscimol in it and it's not um, it's not processed correctly.

46:15 - Speaker 1 People can get very very sick and I think where a lot of people think magic mushroom, that's the one they look at because it's like the prettiest right. It's the most illustrative one. It's the same but it's very different in terms of the impact.

46:26 - Speaker 2 That and I say all of this because there's so many now chocolate bars and supplements and there's no third-party regulatory body. The most important thing is to know where it's coming from. And the other challenge it's not like MDMA or other white powders where you can test it?

46:45 - Speaker 1 That was going to be my next question. What if we get it in? How can we test it?

46:48 - Speaker 2 Most testing kits will only tell you if there's psilocybin in it, and there's a lot of these underground chocolate companies chocolate bar companies that are putting a little bit of psilocybin, but also other things that you just don't know about. And so there's a company called Hyphae Labs H-Y-P-H-A-E Labs, out of Oakland that started to publish testing results. They're testing a lot of these underground chocolate bars and whatnot. So one thing is to check there. Another thing is you could buy a testing kit. I tell folks just grow your own mushrooms as a starting point, or find a friend or person that you trust who's growing their own mushrooms and just get it that way to start. And, worst case, go to our website, go to the sourcing guide and figure it out from there, but don't just buy from random strangers, like there's so many spam accounts now on Instagram.

47:38 Don't ever buy from a stamp account. Don't ever buy from a random stranger that reaches out to you More times than not, they're just trying to. You know, screw you over, You're not going to get anything. So just be discerning about the choices that you make in terms of where you get this.

47:51 - Speaker 1 Which I'm sure no doubt when I post this episode, especially video clips of social media.

47:57 - Speaker 2 I'm just waiting for all the spam bot psilocybin accounts to blow up my DMs on this, which we'll do, yeah.

48:04 - Speaker 1 Yeah, that will happen. So then the next question I think for the listener is all right, if I'm not going to grow it, uh and all the these resources you're talking about, we'll have in the show notes for everybody the uh video description box as well. Um, I, I'm interested. Yeah, I want to try it. I want to test it out for various reasons the legality, the risk, risk. What should we be concerned about and what could we be, you know, up against?

48:33 - Speaker 2 right. So the the truth is these are all schedule one substances, still meaning the dea considers them to be highly addictive with no medical value, which is the exact opposite of what mushrooms actually are. Yeah, which is the irony, cannabis is also a schedule one substance, so take that as you will. Oregon, colorado, have legalized it, jamaica, the Netherlands, there's a few other jurisdictions internationally who have legalized it. Most people who are listening to this, most people who access this, will be doing so illegally. So then it's like, okay, well, what are we getting into? One is just being mindful if you have a family, if you're a mom, you have kids. Just being mindful of that. Right, I'm a guy, I'm 33, I don't have kids. If something were to happen to me and I've been very public about this for 10 years now and nothing has ever happened to me, right, I talk about how I do psychedelics, you know it's just like they don't care at this point, but it's good to be mindful of that.

49:33 The biggest risk is in selling a lot of mushrooms and distributing, right, that's the biggest risk. If you're just looking at how do I acquire this for my own personal use? The majority of people will ship through USPS, which you need a warrant to open, so the chances of that happening are very, very little. And what's great about where we're now at in the United States is 61% of Americans now support legal psychedelic assisted therapy. The number of vets and first responders who have healed using psychedelic therapy is pretty insane. So I feel like most of the stigma has dropped away.

50:11 Public education is very widespread and the cases that I've seen where someone gets arrested for psilocybin mushrooms it's always because they've been growing a ton, a lot and selling them A lot, and these people don't even go to jail still, they'll just go to probation Interesting. So there's enough now, I think, momentum and education, where this is very, very low risk. There's, like I said at the beginning of the show, four million people microdosed psilocybin mushrooms last year in the United States alone. I don't think a single one of those people got caught.

50:42 - Speaker 1 Yeah, and to put it in perspective, last I checked again, I'm I don't work for law enforcement, I don't make the rules of the laws here, but especially in a state or a city where it is decriminalized, right, I could be in that state, in that city, walking around, going you know, hey, here's my psilocybin, eating it, consuming it, whatever. And a police officer would have to in order of priority, would have to address somebody jaywalking before they could come over to do anything to me. So just kind of the hierarchy there.

51:12 - Speaker 2 Yeah, and those cities, just so the audience is aware, are Oakland, berkeley, seattle, detroit, sacramento, washington DC Sacramento is not Washington DC. And then there's a few others, like Cambridge and like small Santa Barbara might be one, santa Cruz might be one, so there's these smaller places. And then Colorado, everything has been decriminalized, so mushrooms, ayahuasca, iboga, peyote, san Pedro. So all of those have been decriminalized, like we talked about Oregon used to, but that is no longer the case. They revoked it. So in those cities you can personally possess psychedelic mushrooms and, as you mentioned, there's no misdemeanor. Right, it's maybe a ticket, maybe, but probably not even If they want to deal with a hassle at that point?

52:11 - Speaker 1 They usually don't, they usually don't. So then my next question is who stands to benefit the most? Besides curiosity, besides maybe, just you know, everyone else in my friend circle is doing it and I trust their opinion, their input, you know, I trust this resource, your resource. Um, who stands to benefit the most and what are, uh, the more consistent types of benefits someone could expect from microdosing psilocybin?

52:38 - Speaker 2 Yeah, so my response to this is maybe a little edgy, maybe nontraditional. There are certain people who should never take psychedelics. Right Like who If you have predisposition or a family history to psychosis or schizophrenia, you should never be taking psychedelics. That's the main one If you potentially are in recovery or recently in recovery from any kind of substance abuse or addiction.

53:04 Yeah, I would say so like within the last year or two, probably be very mindful about getting back into psychedelics If it's been five or 10 years and you're like no, this is a different path. It's like there are a lot of people who have been in recovery, who have come into plant medicine work and it's been super helpful and beneficial. It's a very different substance than alcohol and opioids and whatnot, but just you know. That's typically why I advise if you're recently out of or recently in recovery, be mindful of getting into this as well. But those are. And then if you have, you know, borderline personality disorder, if you have certain types of bipolar, if you're on lithium lithium is contraindicated with a lot of these psychedelics, which is most often prescribed for bipolar or schizophrenia.

53:45 - Speaker 1 What about any other medication concerns?

53:48 - Speaker 2 Lithium is really the only one that's contraindicated, which is why. For psilocybin specifically, which is why I'm going to say what I'm going to say I think basically everyone can benefit from microdosing psilocybin mushrooms, just like I believe everyone could benefit if they took creatine.

54:06 Everyone could benefit if they took. My belief is fish oil. Everyone could benefit if they take vitamin D, so I look at it as a physiological supplement at these low doses that helps to lower chronic inflammation, that helps to improve neuroplasticity, that helps to increase energy and improve mood and that helps you to get better sleep. Like what's not to like about that right? And so, broadly speaking, I would say the vast majority of humans on this planet could benefit from taking low doses of psychedelics. That's my very edgy opinion.

54:37 - Speaker 1 I fully support that opinion Fully.

54:40 - Speaker 2 When we get into the nuance of it. I think there's a few types of folks who I think could benefit from it most. Right, the first class is a group that we've already talked about, which is anyone with traumatic brain injury, a history of concussions. It could be PTSD from war or even sports in terms of what that can do from a violence perspective. Like you have ex-hockey players who are really helping to heal their brain health with psilocybin in particular.

55:04 - Speaker 1 I hear they have anger issues that might help.

55:07 - Speaker 2 So I think anyone who has a history of concussions, tbi or PTSD the PTSD is a little bit more nuanced requires therapeutic support. If you want to do these low doses, but they can really really benefit from taking micro doses, these low doses, but they can really really benefit from taking micro doses, taking low doses of psychedelics.

55:24 - Speaker 1 I'll throw my hat in the ring as concussion, tbi, ptsd, survivor, micro dosing, macro dosing, psilocybin and other psychedelic assisted psychotherapies, but also recreational or intentional recreational use, has no bullshit, giving me my life back right and I'll just leave that there. Wow, that's powerful.

55:46 - Speaker 2 Thank you for that and I'd say that's the next. It's like not only people have tbi and concussion and brain injuries, but also folks who are on prozac, on zoloft, on lexapro, people who are on Adderall, ritalin, vyvanse, right. So those who struggle with ADHD or depression, that a lot of folks find that they don't want to be dependent on these substances, these psychiatric medications, for the rest of their life and potential side effects and the terrible side effects that they come with. And a lot of people maybe the antidepressant initially worked for them but then the efficacy tends to wane after six months, a year, a year and a half. So anyone who's like stuck on psychiatric medications, specifically SSRIs and things for ADHD, have often found support with psychedelics to wean off of that. Now, the context that I always provide, the sort of warning label that I always provide, is do so under the guidance of a medical professional. In other words, if you're on Lexapro or Prozac or you're on Ritalin, don't just go off cold turkey, don't stop.

56:48 No, yeah, do this under the guidance of your psychiatrist. You'd be surprised at how many psychiatrists nowadays know about psychedelics and are aware of it and preferably have someone in your corner whether that's a coach or another, maybe like a nurse psychiatrist who can help support you in that process, and we have. We have, as I mentioned at the beginning, we're now training practitioners, so if there's someone like that that you're interested in working with, we have a directory on third wave. That's a directory of retreats, clinics, coaches and therapists that you can work with who will help you. You with with. This is part of what we help folks with Right. So that's the second main group.

57:23 The third main group and this is the group that I fall into, this is probably the group that you fall into now, as well as people who just are looking, and they're they're looking to push the boundaries right. They're looking to explore what else is possible. They're interested, as we talked about, in more flow and greater creativity. They're interested in potentially working with low doses of psychedelics to help improve their sex life, to help improve, you know, socializing when they go out with friends. So there's a lot of ways, then, in which these low doses of psychedelics can be used not just for clinical healing although I think that's where the greatest need in many ways is that's where you're going to see the greatest impact and effect but also in what I would call the betterment of the well.

58:04 And how could the skillful use of these low doses of psychedelics help us to become what I say become better leaders, lovers and listeners, so we can lead better, we can communicate better, we relate better, we're more vulnerable, we're more honest, we're open and we learn how to have more presence. We learn how to really listen to people and be with them, because that presence is often the gift in and of itself. So those, I would say, are the three main groups of folks and the first two in particular TBI, concussion, but also depression, adhd.

58:37 - Speaker 1 People notice really big improvements when they start on a specific microdosing protocol for those two reasons, and so now I want to share a little bit of my personal experience with microdosing. I mentioned earlier. I used a microdose product that had some other items in it, such as Shilajit, cordyceps, lion's Mane, ashwagandha, I believe, a vitamin B complex like a B3, b6, and I think, vitamin D as well. I think that sums up everything, and I did two days on, one day off for one month. I have never felt more connected and more embodied in mind and body than any other practice meditation, diet, sauna, fasting and I've made wellness and optimization my personal life and professional life for the past, pushing two decades now. And so when I say and I, I I hesitate to kind of share that information sometimes, because sometimes people will hear that myself included. I'll hear, oh, this thing worked for this person for this amount, this protocol, and they had this benefit. So therefore I'm going to have the same experience. That's not always the case, but I will say this, like to your point earlier, I think microdosing does have profound, blanket physiological and even mental health benefits for, I think, the general public.

01:00:04 But after about day two or three, I've never felt more connected in mind and body and it was this really unique sensation of being fully in the driver's seat of my body, of my consciousness, of my creativity, to where I could choose to upshift. I could choose to downshift. I could really slow things down if I wanted to drop in, wanted to become more present and just allow kind of these sensations or memories or feelings, or just that day's sensations and feelings in my body to kind of surface and sit with it. Or I could sit down in front of my laptop and crank out two, three hours of work like that and just feel in such flow. But also and I'm going to put this up on the screen if you guys are watching the video I was floored at the quantitative benefits, particularly with HRV heart rate variability improved, my resting heart rate decrease Good thing.

01:00:59 My recovery improved improved, my sleep improved. I have been using the whoop activity tracker here. It's been on my wrist every day for almost five years. Uh, if you just look at this and zoom in so you can see june 2021 is when I started this protocol and you can see that, wow, you can see the jump in my hr 55 to 77 to 99.

01:01:20 And after that.

01:01:22 - Speaker 2 Then it goes to 93, then it goes up to 133 in October.

01:01:26 - Speaker 1 Please say that on the microphone for everybody.

01:01:29 - Speaker 2 So we saw 55 in June 2021, 77, 99, september 21, 93, and then in October 133 for heart rate variability, and then in October 133 for heart rate variability. So you basically nearly quadrupled your HRV within a four-month span after microdosing. And when you mentioned that, my then big question is what other variables, if any, also changed while you were microdosing, and what I mean by that? Were you willing to go harder in the sauna or stay longer in the cold plunge? Were you? Were you able to do more reps in the gym? Were you able to, you know, sleep better because you weren't as distracted by social media? Like, what did you notice and observe about those months? That may have been an additional contributing factor to the increase in HRV, perfect follow-up question.

01:02:22 - Speaker 1 And this is where I always try to tell people I do not credit microdosing, I do not credit psilocybin as the silver bullet, right? I do not give it all the credit. This one thing, you do. This one thing all of a sudden, your physiological, bio and even mental state just goes through the roof. It unlocked something in me to allow for greater creativity, to allow for being aware, so much more aware, of the limits of my body that I should be respecting and the limits. Maybe I could really push on in terms of working out harder or working more on recovery, going harder in the sauna, going longer in the cold plunge, um, being more aware of where I was giving my energy and how I was spending it. Maybe I could really pull back on certain things and go no, I can actually get more done in less time because I was bullshitting or I need more time. So the level of awareness of mind and body just was blasted wide open. And so and I credit psilocybin for being the tool to unlock that Do I think, should someone microdose to the same product, the same protocol I did? Are they going to have the same benefits? Maybe, maybe not. And again, it goes back to what you were saying earlier of you have to have the right intention going in, and for me it was years and years and years and years of trying a lot of different things. But also this was 2021. We're in the thick of COVID.

01:03:53 I personally was in a position of questioning quite literally everything in my life questioning rules, government, society, my own self-imposed rules. I'm going to put up a couple of links from some other past episodes where I did some solo episodes on really diving into all of that. But that's just really kind of high level. So if anybody's interested in learning more about my experiences, I'll link those in the show notes for you. But it was just the key that unlocked potential in my quantitative self, my qualitative self, mind and body that just compounded so quickly. I mean you saw the data of how significantly improved my HRV was and then my sleep improved because of that, my recovery improved. Because of that, my recovery improved. Because of that, my business improved. Because of that. It was just incredible.

01:04:46 - Speaker 2 Can I break it down a little bit? So what we often talk about is microdosing is not a magic pill. There's a conditioning that most of us come in from who have been raised in a Western country a pill to fix every ill, meaning, if something's wrong, I want to take this thing because I'm broken and it'll fix me Right, which is actually not how humans are. Humans are much more complex than that. That whole ethos has come from the industrial era, where we've essentially treated ourselves like machines, right, which is a whole other side conversation.

01:05:16 What psychedelics teach, what psilocybin teaches, is that we're much more than machine, right, that we are this human essence and that we are much more complex than machines can ever be.

01:05:25 And so, really looking at microdosing, then, as a catalyst, as you mentioned, right, it's really good for helping to get us up and out of ruts and get the energy moving in a creative direction.

01:05:35 We're no longer do we feel like we are victim to our external circumstances, but there's often sort of an energy that comes online where it's like no, I can do this.

01:05:45 I have this capability Because, as you and I both know, mindset is 80% of it, and so, if you can get your mind right, if you can get your energy up, if you can get your mood better, all of a sudden it has this snowballing cascading effect on all other areas of your life, right, and so that's a lot of what we teach is look at microdosing as the catalyst, look at it as the activator, but don't give up your power to this thing outside of yourself, because in giving up your power to it, you're just recreating the same problems that got you here in the first place. This is something that can help to open you up and get you moving, but you don't need it, you know. And it's not physiologically addictive that's what's beautiful about psychedelics. But like anything, it can be psychologically addictive, right? If you start getting in this habit of, oh I can only feel better if I take this, then you are again sort of beholden to this thing outside of you, which you don't want.

01:06:40 - Speaker 1 I think there's a lot of misunderstanding, ignorance, fear, misinformation around things like psilocybin and microdosing is I'm going to get hooked, I'm going to want more, I'm going to need and want all these other things.

01:06:52 In my experience and, yeah, the experience of every other person I've ever talked to about this you reach a point of like, oh, I really don't need it. I can go months, months without ever touching anything. And then it's like, okay, I feel this calling, or this new thing has kind of surfaced, or my therapist kind of brings up something that I really want to dive deeper into. And I know that I have this tool and that's what this show is all about is to bring people on to talk about things to you know anecdotal experience, clinical evidence, life experience to be a tool, a potential tool for me, for the listener, the viewer, to uh, to think about, to consider and to potentially try. And so I ask the guests every time the last question is ever forward. How can this help somebody move forward to live a life ever forward? What does that mean to you?

01:07:46 - Speaker 2 I'll come back to the two things that we don't want to have the repressed memory that we're too scared to open up those going into. That is the greatest opportunity to propel ourselves forward in a significant way, and to do that by ourselves can sometimes be difficult, overwhelming, too challenging. But I really look at psilocybin and a lot of these psychedelic plant medicines as allies, I'll call them. They have an intelligence in and of themselves in becoming who we know we're meant to become, largely because they help us to, I would say, cultivate the courage to do the hard thing, and oftentimes the requirement to do the hard thing is it's too much, it brings up a lot of fear, and yet everything that we want is on the other side of that. And so I think, moving forward, looking at ourselves as ever forward, microdosing, psychedelics are great tools when used with intention and responsibility on that path.

01:09:14 - Speaker 1 Well, guys, I'm going to have Paul's information down in the show notes, the description box, for everything we talked about, including my other episodes that I did, talking about my experience with ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, my microdosing protocol and, whether or not you choose to go down this route of microdosing psychedelics. I hope that this idea of pushing the boundaries, just being curious about something else in your life, is going to be the tool necessary for you to uh, to lean into courage and to develop courage to just take any kind of action, microdose action, um, in any which way you need to today. Thank you For more information on everything you just heard. Make sure to check this episode show notes or head to EverForwardRadio.com